UPDATE 11-9-2016: Hello President-elect Trump, goodbye ObamaCare, the Unaffordable Careless Act!
Preface: I supported ObamaCare in other articles (example 1, example 2). This one lambastes it. ObamaCare works only if you don't.
Young John Roberts enters a spelling bee
Pronouncer: John, spell “freedom.”
Roberts: C-o-n-t-r-o-l.
Pronouncer: That is not correct, John.
Roberts (raising his voice): Oh yes it is! Just you wait and see!
John's Mom (apologetically): We have the same problem at home. John dons a black robe, then puts a noose around the neck of his sister and tells her what to do.
Pronouncer (horrified): Mrs. Roberts, you don't mean …
John's Mom: Oh, no, not THAT!
Pronouncer: Then what?
John's Mom: He takes his sister's allowance and ordered her to destroy the vegetables she grew in the garden.
Pronouncer: Why?
John's Mom: He cited the Wickard v. Filburn case in which the Supreme Court said a farmer engaged in interstate commerce by not engaging in interstate commerce.
Pronouncer (puzzled, shocked): What?
John's Mom: The farmer, Roscoe Filburn, grew wheat to feed his chickens, not to sell. Although his wheat was solely intended for his chickens, the federal government ordered him to destroy his crops and pay a fine.
Pronouncer (incredulously): Oh, come on, you're pulling my leg!
John's Mom: No, I'm not. That was an actual Supreme Court case.
Roberts (smugly): See, freedom IS spelled C-o-n-t-r-o-l.
“It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals … You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on.”
— Genius Eric Hoffer, interview with Eric Sevareid (1967)
“The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.”
— Eric Hoffer
Who ridiculed healthcare mandates?
Barack Obama!
MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, also known as The Architect of Obamacare, received a fortune for helping craft that legislation and insulted the ones (taxpayers) who ultimately paid him, bragging that it was the stupidity of the American voter that enabled them to hide Obamacare's true costs from the public. The Obama administration tried to distance themselves from him but messages later surfaced revealing that he played a key role in Obamacare and a top administration official called him “our hero.”
“A taxpayer voting for Barack Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.”
“The desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”
— John le Carré
“People don't sell their souls to the Devil, they nickel and dime them away.”
— Ayn Rand
“Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
— Albert Einstein
“All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.”
— Eric Hoffer
“I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Comment: When supposedly free people do something only because the government forces them to do it—that's control, not freedom.
“Be the chief but never the lord.”
— Lao-Tzu, Chinese philosopher
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
— Thomas Sowell
“The Washington elite is in complete denial, but here are the facts: ObamaCare is a disaster, it is one of the biggest assaults on individual liberty in history, it is stifling economic growth, and it will not work.”
— Chris Chocola
“Groupidity, a special form of groupthink in which we collectively become willing to take risks we individually recognize as stupid — because everybody else in the room seems to think it's fine.”
— Megan McArdle in Why Negativity Is Really Awesome
“The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
— John F. Kennedy (source)
“There is no such thing as part freedom.”
— Nelson Mandela (source)
“Forcing people to violate their conscience is more tyranny than it is of tolerance.”
— Everett Piper, Ph.D.
“What luck for rulers that men do not think.”
— attributed to Adolf Hitler
“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
“The smallest minority on Earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
— Ayn Rand (source)
“But that the unequal should be given to equals, and the unlike to those who are like, is contrary to nature, and nothing which is contrary to nature is good.”
— Aristotle (source)
“If in order to keep the wheels turning you have to deafen ears with propaganda, crack the whip of Terror, and keep pushing people around, then you haven't got a machine civilization no matter how numerous and ingenious your machines.”
— Eric Hoffer
“The real 'haves' are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real 'have nots' are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.”
— Eric Hoffer (source)
“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.”
— Barry Goldwater
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
— C. S. Lewis
“Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.”
— William F. Buckley, Jr.
Introduction and update
The veterans who died waiting for care from the VA illustrate a danger of government-run healthcare. Delays in treating them were covered up by secret waiting lists and lies. However, VA problems are nothing new. Training in plastic surgery in a VA hospital in the 1980s, I ordered a test to determine if a patient's decubitus ulcer had a sufficiently low bacterial count for surgery. The lab canceled the test. I called to inquire why, and was told they'd exceeded their budget for the week — or was it month? I said I'd reorder the test, but the lab technician said that wouldn't do any good: that would also be canceled automatically.
This illustrates the idiocy of VA leaders — the ones responsible for engineering such a dysfunctional system. The test would inevitably be performed. Delaying it wouldn't save money, it would cost more because the patient would be hospitalized several more days because of the delay.
President Obama, wanting to change the United States for the better, thought ObamaCare was just what we needed. The majority of Americans, with their blood boiling, disagree. Steve Jobs didn't live long enough to see ObamaCare, but he had some relevant advice: “Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did.” And for the better, obviously.
Liberalism can be a good way to run a life, but it's a terrible way to run a country. Liberalism is proving to be one of the primary nails in the coffin of the United States, along with the endless wars we cannot afford, $7 trillion spent on the space program that benefited Americans much less than they presume, having fallen hook, line, and sinker for the self-serving NASA propaganda. The federal government perpetually blows money on pork barrel spending for frivolous things like a Vulcan monument, a rice museum, The Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the Montana Sheep Institute, the Reindeer Herder's Association, Hawaiian canoe trips, the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and research to see if female co-eds go all the way after drinking beer, as if we didn't already know.
The government that ostensibly claims to protect us is actually doing a superb job of screwing us in ways most Americans don't understand because they've fallen for the partisan rhetoric that our problems result from the other party, not us. Each major party believes that they offer solutions, not problems, but both (and their followers) are so blinded by reflexive adherence to hidebound ideas that neither can see there are better solutions (example).
A seeming tangent that is very relevant
My sixth-grade teacher called me “slow” and I struggled so much my first two years of high school that I considered dropping out to escape the ignominy of flunking. Introductory courses made my head spin. As late as the end of tenth grade, my life plan was to work on an auto assembly line and continue lifting weights to make me better at one of the two things I did best: arm wrestling. The other was eating cookies.
I returned to class not as a dunce, but as one of the brightest kids. I easily earned perfect grades the remainder of high school, aced college and the MCAT (despite working three jobs and having many personal challenges), and graduated in the top 1% of my class in medical school. One of my bosses said that I was the smartest doctor he ever met, and billionaires now pay me to sit and think. The teacher who once insulted my intelligence, along with my mother who did the same, would deem those successes utterly improbable, but during the summer vacation between tenth and eleventh grades, I serendipitously stumbled upon a way to go from dunce to doctor.
Glorifying intelligence is a waste of time, as is glorifying beauty, but it is eminently worthwhile to study marked improvements in intelligence and creativity so others can extract useful lessons enabling them to replicate such a metamorphosis in brainpower. With this in mind, I wrote to James Shelton on December 22, 2010. His title (Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education) suggests that he would be interested in hearing what I have to say, but he never responded, which is typical of government officials who are happy to continue implementing hidebound educational ideas that make significantly boosting brainpower nothing more than a pipe dream. As a result, virtually all slow kids stay slow, average kids stay average, and most people who were born bright couldn't begin to do what I do.
I dearly want to help others succeed. Most of you could do even more than I have because you'd begin from a higher baseline and benefit by having all of my tips for augmenting intelligence and creativity, not just the few core ones that triggered my transformation from being flummoxed by high school to excelling in medical school. However, Secretary Shelton and others like him won't listen because, despite all of the lip service his boss (President Obama) gave to “change,” few people in Washington or elsewhere want real change. As I explained in my article on ridiculing good new ideas and those who conceive them, creative ideas “can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable.” Even when there is a desperate need for change and the creative solution is wholly positive, most folks prefer to cling to the old way of doing things.
The old way of doing things is causing America to fail. When Plan A didn't work and then Plan B failed, most Americans think that it is time to switch back to Plan A without considering Plan C. It's not that Democrats or Republicans are screwing us; it is both of them, endlessly, with most of their solutions proving to be nothing more than more problems. We need real change, not rhetoric of it.
I wrote this article when I firmly believed the Tea Party was the best solution to our Big Government problem. I wrote the note following it when I just as firmly believed the Tea Party is nothing more than a distraction that will ultimately fail to achieve its objectives.
The Tea Party has already lost its momentum. Want proof? Look who is the 2012 Republican presidential candidate: Mitt Romney, a man who does what Republicans have always done: trick voters into thinking they will combat Big Government but do nothing more than make a few largely symbolic cuts here and there while doing nothing to address the primary problem. If Romney were a weight loss expert, he'd advise his clients to choose marginally less fattening choices at McDonald's but not counsel them to avoid the Golden Arches. As lackluster as Romney's ideas are, they are much better than those from Obama, whose years in office have proven that even if his fix worked, we can't afford it.
Opposition to spreading the wealth around was the foremost reason I opposed Barack Obama, but I now favor wealth redistribution in a way that would benefit not only the recipients but also the donors. Opposition to government-run (or mandated) healthcare was one of my primary motivations for writing various books and blog postings that established me as a Captain of Conservatism who evidently wrote so well in support of it that one of its leaders adored by Tea Party fans extolled how and what I wrote.
I now could strongly support government-run healthcare if it were drafted in a way that was not only constitutional, but so much better than what we have now that even staunch Tea Party fans would be so thrilled to have it that Obama would win a second term in a landslide. Nevertheless, I still oppose ObamaCare because it doesn't address the fundamental roots of our healthcare crisis and isn't constitutional, despite what Chief Justice John Roberts thinks. I'll address him in a minute, but first let's see how Obama superbly ridiculed the idea not only of healthcare mandates, but mandating a solution to anything:
In 2008, Senator Obama said, “Let's break down what she [Hillary Clinton] really means by a mandate. What's meant by a mandate is that the government is forcing people to buy health insurance and so she's suggesting a parent is not going to buy health insurance for themselves if they can afford it. Now, my belief is that most parents will choose to get health care for themselves and we make it affordable. Here's the concern. If you haven't made it affordable, how are you going to enforce a mandate. I mean, if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.” (video)
That was utterly brilliant. Too bad he didn't believe it.
If the Affordable Care Act were truly affordable, the government wouldn't need to threaten fines for not having it; people would flock to it. If a restaurant wanted to fine you for not eating their food, there's something terribly wrong with it.
“ … the healthcare industry spends four times as much on lobbying as the number two Beltway spender, the much-feared military-industrial complex.”
— Journalist Steven Brill, author of America's Bitter Pill, in I Experienced America's Broken Healthcare System While Looking Up From a Hospital Gurney
Comment: Knowing that, it shouldn't shock you that citizens of The Land of the Free lost one of their most fundamental freedoms so healthcare insurance companies could get more customers and give them overpriced policies with outrageous deductibles and co-pays with coverage that compels them to pay for things they don't need, such as maternity care for postmenopausal women and men. Once the auto insurance industry gains this clout, blind and paralyzed people who can't drive will be forced to pay for insurance they can't use.
“There is something fundamentally unfair about a government that takes away so much of people's money, power, and personal control while telling them that life will be better as a result.”
— Steve Forbes
“Unified Theory of Government: Looters take from producers to give to moochers who vote for looters.”
— Neal Boortz
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
— Frederic Bastiat
“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.”
— W. Somerset Maugham
“I find it hilarious that if we lie to the government, it's a crime. But if they lie to us, it's politics.”
— Ziad K. Abdelnour in Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
“We are in an economic war. It is a war between those who create wealth and those who believe they have some sort of divine mandate to appropriate wealth. … Only a mind with an envious, greedy perspective would consider punitively taxing the rich as a viable solution to our fiscal miasma. This is a solution springing from the fount of ignorance and deemed wise only by fools. … The wealth of America isn't an inventory of goods; it's an organic, living entity, a fragile, pulsing fabric of ideas, expectations, loyalties, moral commitments, visions, and people. To slice it up like an apple pie and redistribute it would destroy it just as surely as trying to share Stephen Hawking's intellect by sharing slices of his brain would surely kill him.”
— Ziad K. Abdelnour (ibid.)
“Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”
— Will Rogers
Why mandate anything? People will choose what is best for them. If they don't choose it, it's not the best.
Obama had good reason to ridicule mandates that force people to do something because even kids can look at how the Soviet Union self-destructed and conclude that central planning doesn't work. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Hillary Clinton's love of mandates comes from the same brain that flunked the Washington DC bar exam. That's right — she flunked that bar exam but thinks she's smart enough to lead the United States and the free world! Into what? Repeating the mistakes of the past? That's stupidity and even insanity (Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”).
The rule of law stipulates that all people are equally subject to the law, but ObamaCare makes a mockery of this basic principle of justice. The Obama Administration is handing out exemptions to select corporations but not others, in effect saying, “You don't need to obey this law, but your competitor does”—thereby giving a competitive advantage to the one exempted. That's unconstitutional; no President has the authority to pick sides in this manner. Granting special privileges is what tyrants do. Regardless if you're liberal or conservative, if you care about justice, you should be outraged by this abuse of power.
“ … innovations that make healthcare cheaper, simpler and more accessible, produce resistances previously not addressed. Healthcare, as opposed to automobiles, … has many "identity stakeholders." These include the AMA, AARP, patients, doctors, nurses, FDA, and the politicians …”
— Disruptive Innovation Theory Revisited: Christensen, Hatkoff & Kula
If ObamaCare is so great, why won't President Obama be on it? It is good enough for you, but not him.
American healthcare had significant flaws, but changing from bad to worse is not the change we need. Obama's crowning achievement is so flawed he can induce people to sign up for ObamaCare only by threatening them.
And lying. You can keep your doctor. Bull. You can keep your health insurance plan if you like it. Bull. In 2009, addressing the American Medical Association, Obama promised that “no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
That's a lie. Period.
That's also a serious crime known as fraudulent inducement, which means misleading others by omitting facts or distorting them — suckering them, in other words. Deceiving, tricking, duping, suckering — it's not legally permissible to lie to induce someone to act in a way that ultimately harms them. Since the loss of your doctor or health insurance plan could kill you, this isn't a trivial loss.
Obama also promised he would “cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2500 a year.”
Another lie. ObamaCare premiums, deductibles, and co-pays will astronomically inflate healthcare costs for many people and devastate the middle class. Sky-high deductibles and co-pays discourage people from seeking care and thus make ObamaCare seem better at controlling costs than it really is.
In 2009, Obama added, “My view is that health care reform should be guided by a simple principle: fix what’s broken and build on what works.”
To his credit, he did indeed fix some things that were broken, but he broke so many others that he produced considerably more net harm than good: what central planning invariably does, even to the once-mighty USSR.
Contrary to what some of his critics say, President Obama isn't stupid. In fact, he's not just smart, but scary smart. He knew exactly what he was doing. He graduated from Harvard Law School. If he was too lazy to read the Affordable Care Act, he should be impeached on grounds of sheer incompetence, like doctors who sign prescriptions they don't write or read. If he read it, he knew that his promises to the American people were bold-faced lies. So is he a liar?
Mia Marie Pope says yes. She knew him when they were teenagers. In an interview with Dr. James David Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary in Harlem, New York, Pope said Obama was openly gay, portrayed himself as a foreign student, used crack cocaine, exploited people, was self-aggrandizing and “a pathological liar.”
She added a tidbit that corroborates what others said years ago: “I actually called the FBI several times, exposing his using fake Social Security numbers, and they did nothing. … I remember this guy as low-road guy. In other words, you wouldn't trust this guy to walk your dog.” She added that she has gay friends and his sexuality doesn't matter to her. I agree. I am not interested in Obama's personal life. I agree with what one of my relatives, Chester Arthur, said: “I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody's damned business.”
If Obama is personally flawed, big deal. Who isn't? Let's remember what Abraham Lincoln said: “It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.” Friedrich Nietzsche said, “In heaven all the interesting people are missing.” Anyone who asks for perfection is asking too much, but it isn't asking for too much to ask for the truth, which Obama did not give. Hence his lack of honesty is relevant, and a long pattern of it attests to his character—or lack of.
Dr. Manning said, “When Larry Sinclair publicized and had a press conference indicating he had had a homosexual relationship with Obama and that they both smoked crack cocaine — this was before the election, no one really paid Larry any attention.”
Probably because most people agree with what President Arthur said. Obama's personal flaws, whatever they are, matter to him and his family. But his repeated lying to the American people is a serious breach of duty to them, and hence grounds for impeachment. The United States had enough problems before ObamaCare. Healthcare was a mess, but now it's worse than ever.
Obama was correct in 2008: mandates are not the answer. Hillary Clinton thinks so, but she's not as smart as Obama. He passed his bar exam. Clinton flunked the DC bar. She rose to fame on the coattails of her husband. Without his panache, no one would pay attention to her pathetic third-rate ideas that were proven wrong long ago. A NY Daily News columnist suggested that Hillary Clinton's political success is attributable to her being “on a stage where name recognition often substitutes for merit.”
Americans are not only losing their healthcare coverage and jobs because of ObamaCare, they're losing their patience with a government that is proving more adept in creating problems than solving them. With friends like the federal government, no one needs enemies.
Want proof? Read How Medical Care Is Being Corrupted and discover how your doctor, insurance company, and government is endangering and perhaps killing you for their benefit: weaving death panels into the fabric of medicine so thoroughly most people will never know why they and loved ones received second-rate care. Note the source is The New York Times, not a conservative conspiracy tabloid. And note the authors: two highly respected physicians from Harvard Medical School.
The first casualty of tyranny is truth, then freedom, so wise people who wish to retain freedom should be leery of leaders who lie. Obama's lies should thus scare the hell out of everyone with an ounce of common sense. Ethical leaders have no need for lies. Obama lied not just once but multiple times to sucker the USA into accepting his crazy plan. Imagine if he'd told the truth:
“Under my plan, there's a good chance you will lose your doctor or health insurance plan even if you love it. I mandated nutty changes to plans just to force you to lose them. For example, you must pay for maternity coverage even if you never had kids and have had a hysterectomy. I'm not a doctor, nor is Secretary [of Health and Human Services Kathleen] Sebelius, but we will unleash a blizzard of regulations to tell your doctors what they can and cannot do for you. If you think we're doin' this to provide better care, you're the kind of fool I love: one so gullible he is easily controlled. Oh, remember what I said about cutting the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2500 a year? It was bullshit. Many millions of you will not save a dime. In fact, you'll pay several times more for worse coverage with much higher deductibles and co-pays. Also buried in the thousands of pages of laws and regulations are lots of nasty surprises that will make you miserable, and perhaps dead. And no, Mr. Trump, you can't see my college transcripts and records, 'cause I have more lies to conceal. "He who has nothing to hide, hides nothing." Remember that saying? It's true. Why did I pay millions to seal my records? 'Cause I have lots to hide. With so many mysteries surrounding me, you can bet some of them are true. For example, how did I, a third-rate student who excelled only in drinking booze and using drugs, get into Harvard Law School? Betcha wanna know; betcha I'll never tell.”
The fictional speech in the above paragraph is closer to the truth than what Obama promised. Mia Marie Pope called Obama “a pathological liar.” Want proof? Obama proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he is a liar who will look Americans in the face and lie through his teeth to them even about something like health insurance that can mean the difference between life and death. If President Obama is willing to lie about things knowing the truth would eventually surface, what else is he willing to lie about? Probably a lot.
“Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.”
— Albert Einstein (source)
If Obama is hiding something, he is hardly alone. Rich and powerful people often have a public image that makes them seem better than they really are. For example, after my Mom divorced, she dated a very rich and powerful man, but what I knew about him as a kid was just the tip of the iceberg. Other details surfaced in newspaper articles and his obituary, the likes of which I've never before seen. He was a philanthropist and Chairman and/or CEO of several corporations and a member of the Board of Directors of so many corporations, hospitals, colleges, banks, organizations, and charities I wonder how he had time for even 5% of them. He was an appointee of several presidents and Governors. He was decorated by a foreign government (that I won't name, along with other details to protect his identity). He was the former chair of a major metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. He received numerous honorary degrees and awards. His birthday celebrations drew unbelievably huge crowds, including hot women young enough to be his great-granddaughter. (Now what kind of old codger has birthday parties that draw many yummy young babes and countless ritzy people? A very powerful one.) In his younger days, he rose to an impressive rank in the U.S. military. His funeral Mass included Cardinals and numerous priests.
He was obviously a great man and very devoted to religion, yet he dated my Mom when he was married to someone else. To impress her, he offered to kill anyone she wanted (she declined). She said he was in the Mafia — what we'd call a godfather — but just like in the movie, he claimed he was transitioning into legitimate businesses, which he obviously did. Though great, he wasn't perfect. He had secrets. I wasn't particularly bright as a kid, but I do recall wondering how he could be in my home to see my Mom on Saturday evenings without his wife wondering where he was. Now I know.
As someone who is part Native American, I am acutely aware of how brutally and unjustly my people were subjugated by the United States that was hell-bent on expansion. If they had to steamroll over others to achieve their dreams, they were willing to shatter the dreams of Native Americans and violate the principles American leaders gave only lip service to: freedom and equality. But not for Native Americans. Ya don't look like us, ya don't vote, hence ya have no power. Ya do what you are told. Ya dig?
The USA also participated in slavery and reportedly learned a lesson from it — but did it? The United States is supposed to exemplify freedom, not coercive control, but every week there are more controls that erode more freedoms. Virtually all common-sense laws (prohibiting murder, rape, theft, etc.) were written long before you and I were born. In the decades since, our legislators wrote millions and millions more pages of laws and regulations to control us.
Do the math:
No freedom gained + freedom lost = net loss of freedom
This flood of legislation and bureaucracy has unquestionably diminished our freedoms. People rarely gripe about injustice unless it affects them. Now many millions of Americans are complaining about ObamaCare because it robs them of yet another freedom and more money: two things that Washington has an insatiable greed for.
My people lived in North America for thousands of years before the USA appointed itself master of this land and took control of it. Now they're taking control of you. Based on their track record, are you really surprised? Ya do what you are told. Ya dig? Just like the Native Americans.
Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous poem reveals the indifference of German intellectuals after Nazis began purging selected targets, one by one:
In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
And then … they came for me …
And by that time there was no one left to speak up.
Our government isn't targeting people; it is targeting freedoms, and it is eroding them, one by one. President Obama is targeting your healthcare freedom. I've been cheated by my healthcare insurance company, but I had the freedom to fire them and choose another plan. Try firing the federal government.
People who support President Obama in his relentless quest to impose ObamaCare seem oblivious to the fact that then-Senator Obama ridiculed healthcare mandates in 2008 while campaigning against Hillary Clinton. He wisely (and humorously) went on to illustrate how daffy mandates in general are by saying, “ … if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.”
But shouldn't everyone have healthcare?
President Obama's ostensible justification for ObamaCare goes something like this: In a country this rich, everyone should have healthcare.
First, the United States isn't the wealthy country it once was. Now we're buried under a mountain of debt that is almost impossible to repay, and we have unfunded liabilities that dwarf that dark cloud. It would be an absolute ray of sunshine if politicians tuned into that economic reality instead of sticking their heads in the sand and pretending the problems will go away. They know it won't, yet they kick the can down the road, permitting the problems to snowball, thereby planting the seeds for what will almost surely result in the collapse of our economy and government as enraged citizens turn on it in the not-too-distant future. If you think that will never happen, analyze the demographic reality. If your brain is big enough to wrap itself around that, you know the writing is on the wall. Without a miracle or two, the USA's goose is cooked. (However, I'm optimistic enough to think we can pull ourselves out of this mess by tapping our ingenuity; I'm doing my part by working on inventions that could (a) kickstart our economy, (b) improve healthcare, and (c) slash the need for it.)
Second, as Obama once wisely suggested, it's silly to think that mandates are a viable solution to anything. A considerably better response would be to lower the cost of quality healthcare so more people can afford it. The American healthcare system is largely run by moneygrubbers who have no incentive to address the fundamental reasons why healthcare costs so much and often delivers such abysmal results. ObamaCare does little or nothing to correct those problems, making the moneygrubbers very happy. We get lip service about saving money while they shove billions more in their pockets.
Third, in the decades before ObamaCare, poor people could obtain free healthcare. I treated countless thousands of them, so I know what I'm talking about. Not a single one was kicked out of an emergency department, nor denied admission, nor denied long-term follow-up care in medical and surgical clinics.
Part of my job as a doctor wasn't just to know medicine but to help patients receive the care they needed, and 100% of them did, not 99.9%. If President Obama was truly serious about providing healthcare to everyone, he'd let me or someone else who understands the system explain how it works. But he doesn't understand it. Without his magic presidential wand to mandate unworkable solutions, we'd see how little he knows about the healthcare system by giving him a white coat and patients who need care but have no money to pay for it. About the only helpful advice he could offer would be to go ask a doctor or some other knowledgeable healthcare professional.
Indeed, why don't we?
To illustrate the insanity of ObamaCare, it mandates coverage for birth control but not dental care for adults. As any smart dentist or physician can tell you, dental care is one of the primary keys to preventive medical care: preventive, as in preventing countless health problems, the misery and death they cause, and the umpteen billions spent treating them. Every dollar spent on dental care ultimately saves much more, so only ignorant politicians and bureaucrats would prioritize birth control over dental care.
To illustrate this with an actual example of someone I know, consider the case of a woman (I'll call her Stacy) who needs about $10,000 of dental work to correct cracked teeth that are leaking mercury and have shifted so she can no longer properly chew her food or even close her mouth—there is no longer a comfortable “resting spot,” so to speak. The dental occlusion is so bad that she must consciously control it all day long so her upper incisors do not clash into some of her lower ones. That control is effected by muscles that are sore from constant use. Even at night, her body strives to hold her jaw so the occlusion is least bothersome, but when she sleeps on her back, the force required to do that increases so she often wakes up with bothersome pain necessitating analgesics. The overly fatigued muscles are sometimes so stiff she has difficulty opening her mouth.
That's not all. The shifted teeth and poor occlusion resulted in a lisp that distorts her once-nice voice, making her sound less intelligent than she is and threatening her career. She doesn't have $10,000 to spare now, and if she paid for ObamaCare, she would never save up enough to correct what is undoubtedly her greatest medical problem—and one that ObamaCare doesn't cover. This illustrates why individuals are the best ones to decide what is best for them. The one-size-fits-all approach to medicine is a disaster. No kind, thoughtful government that valued freedom would impose it on others.
The slippery slope trying to justify ObamaCare
Some ObamaCare supporters try to justify its imposition by claiming the government had the right to mandate it because if someone does not purchase healthcare, others will pay for it. Ridiculous! I've known people, including myself, who needed healthcare for years and did without it precisely because we could not afford it.
If it is a valid legal principle that freedom can be revoked, and control substituted for it, simply because what someone does or doesn't do may increase costs for others, then the government has the right to mandate that you eat only healthy food and exercise frequently because if you don't, you will very likely need more healthcare that comes not directly from your pocket but from others as the pooled overall cost of healthcare increases.
As we begin to slide down this slippery slope, there's no end to it. The government could mandate:
- that you consume alcohol never or only in moderation
- who you have sex with
- how many children you have
- your occupation, since what you do or don't do affects many others
- what you do in your free time, because if you are having fun and not working, you are limiting our economic growth and depriving the government of tax dollars
- that you never drive unless absolutely necessary, because that pollutes the planet and increases consumption of gasoline and everything used to make cars, thereby increasing demand for them, thereby increasing their price, thereby making them less affordable for others
- that you give up recreation such as boating, snowmobiling, and travel, for reasons that should now be obvious
America is supposed to stand for liberty, so the United States is not the right country for control to take the place of freedom.
UPDATE: Obama's vaunted pen is indeed powerful, but the failure of Americans to embrace or even go along with ObamaCare manifests that the pen he likes to brag about cannot force us to our knees. I sincerely appreciate some good and even great things President Obama has done, but ObamaCare is an outrageous affront to our freedom. Whatever ObamaCare is, it's not freedom, it is control. How do you like being controlled?
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
— Winston Churchill
Related topics
Hospital bills are routinely inflated
Medical Extortion, Fake Awards, and Assaulted by an ER Nurse
Man who feared that ObamaCare will result in death shot his children
See other ObamaCare articles
A bumper sticker I'd like to see:
Another one: Their power to tax exceeds our ability to pay.
“The significant point is that people unfit for freedom — who cannot do much with it — are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have-not" type of self. If Hitler had had the talents and the temperament of a genuine artist, if Stalin had had the capacity to become a first-rate theoretician, if Napoleon had had the makings of a great poet or philosopher they would hardly have developed the all-consuming lust for absolute power.
Freedom gives us a chance to realize our human and individual uniqueness. Absolute power can also bestow uniqueness: to have absolute power is to have the power to reduce all the people around us to puppets, robots, toys, or animals, and be the only man in sight. Absolute power achieves uniqueness by dehumanizing others.
To sum up: Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.”
— Eric Hoffer
Notes:
- Since ObamaCare became law, “share prices for four of the major insurance companies — Aetna, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealth — have more than doubled …”
- New school meal requirements: More harm than good?
Comment: Can government get ANYTHING correct? Their ignorance is a threat to our health. - Justice Dept.: At Least 35% Of People Eligible For Obamacare's Medicaid Expansion Have Criminal Histories
Comment: Millions of Americans lack health insurance because they are convicted criminals, not because they have pre-existing conditions or because health insurers are too mean or greedy to cover them. - Update November 2013: ObamaCare is flopping as it meets the real world instead of fantasyland.
- Democrat Voters Confused: “I Didn't Realize I Would Be The One Who Was Going to Pay For It Personally”
Comment: They put chains around their necks, not just the fat cats they gleefully sought to destroy. - Questions about chief justice's health-care ruling could have lasting impact: Speculation persists over why Chief Justice John Roberts joined liberals to uphold the President Obama's signature health-care reform law, and that could affect the Supreme Court.
Excerpt: “A CBS News report … suggested that Chief Justice John Roberts may have switched sides … in part to insulate the court and his own legacy as chief justice from election-year criticism should the court strike down the … law.”
Comment: Although I was staunchly conservative most of my life, it is obvious to me that most conservatives lack a spine, despite all their bluster about being courageous patriots. Roberts is just another pathetic example of this.
A public opinion survey found that 70% of Americans “still firmly support the Declaration of Independence” — and 30% do not? For those too stupid to understand it, the Declaration of Independence basically says that when a noose is placed around your neck, you have the right to remove it.
Although I am now more liberal than I ever imagined I would be, I still think one would need rocks in his head to not realize how the federal government has eroded our freedom with a blizzard of laws compelling us to do things. Every “you must do this or else” law (and that's all of them, since there is no point in toothless legislation) chips away at our freedom.
The United States was founded on the idea that freedom is paramount—not security or free stuff from the government (i.e., taxpayers)—yet many Americans are happy to trade a noose for more stuff they pay for with their tax dollars.
The Supreme Court has no magical ability to do the right thing and ensure justice. They botched this case as they did others, such as the Dred Scott decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that Scott was a slave and hence a piece of property who could not even claim citizenship in the United States! That is beyond disgusting and atrociously at odds with justice; it made a mockery of freedom—what the United States is supposed to stand for.
What people are slowly figuring out is that the U.S. is considerably more obsessed with control than freedom. Want proof? Look at the blizzard of laws and regulations they've rained on us for decades, long after virtually all common-sense laws (prohibiting murder, rape, theft, etc.) were written. Why pass millions and millions more pages of laws and regulations? To control us. Freedom my foot! We're free as long as we stay on our knees and submit to their control.
Roberts is too stupid to not botch President Obama's oath of office, and he was sworn to uphold the Constitution, yet he used some of the most contorted logic in history to justify his decision to uphold ObamaCare. Before it was passed, Obama insisted it was not a tax, Roberts says it is a tax, and the Obama administration now swears up and down that it isn't. One can quibble about that, but no one in their right mind can argue that ObamaCare doesn't erode freedom.
Although I once strongly opposed anything remotely similar to it, I could now strongly support a modification of ObamaCare if it were drafted in accordance with the Constitution and included provisions that would make it so irresistible that even strong Tea Party supporters (I should know, because I once was one) would sing Obama's praises and thank God he was elected. However, Obama and his many advisors appear unable to think of how to craft that legislation so they didn't need to cram it down our throats; instead, we'd clamor for it almost universally, with Obama winning the 2012 election in the greatest landslide in American history. Instead, President Obama now fears losing the election to a man whose greatest attribute is his physical appearance and greatest gift was having the great fortune to be born into a rich and well-connected politically powerful family: not a silver spoon, a golden one.
Ironically, the Supreme Court has no problem trampling the Constitution when it reduces our freedom and tightens the noose around our necks, yet it resolutely enforces the constitutional provision against “cruel and unusual punishment” even though the iniquity of criminals guarantees there will be cruelty—the only question is who will receive it.
As it is now, thanks to the Constitution, criminals are inflicting endless cruelty upon us and making us shake in our boots with fear. They killed my father by bashing his skull in with a pipe (and then dumping his body in a swamp as if it were a piece of garbage), they rape women and children, they kidnap (and likely rape) people such as Holly Bobo, Jennifer Kesse, Mickey Shunick, Jessica Heeringa, Samantha Koenig, Hannah Anderson, and Tara Grinstead (Elizabeth Smart was fortunately rescued). If you spend years watching true crime shows, as I have, you're bound to be sickened by the horrific crimes, yet you'll never hear of 99.999% of them. The United States is an incredibly violent country; our way of controlling criminal behavior obviously isn't working.
Let's face it: we're bound to have cruelty and people shaking in their boots. It makes more sense to inflict sufficiently cruel punishments on criminals so they would truly fear breaking the law than it does to have the criminal justice system we have now, which clearly is an insufficient deterrent, leaving criminals free to inflict endless cruelty and fear on us.
The Supreme Court won't let legislators give us the freedom to inflict punishments that would slash the crime rate, yet the Court that professes to care so much about constitutionality is willing to spit in our faces and help the federal government tighten the noose around our necks. The federal government has done an amazing job of that, along with decimating our prosperity and hopes for a bright future. They've collectively done something that not too long ago would have seemed impossible: take the United States, seemingly destined to be the world's indomitable economic superpower, and inflict considerably more damage upon its future than all of our past and present enemies combined, including Japan and Germany in World War II, the USSR during the Cold War, Islamic terrorists, and everyone convicted of treason in U.S. history. All of those enemies combined couldn't begin to deliver the KO blow that our liberal and conservative politicians have given to present and future Americans.
Only 22% of the nation's likely voters believe the federal government now has the consent of the governed (the most basic principle justifying governmental authority), yet virtually 100% of citizens in this spineless country do little or nothing to stop the progressive erosion of their liberty even though there are perfectly legal and ethical ways to do that. Conservatives are full of hot air but bereft of good ideas on how they could live in harmony with liberals and others while abiding by what the Constitution says and stands for: freedom, not (possibly) well-intentioned laws that undermine freedom.
Our out-of-control, freedom-hating government has made me afraid to give away free chicken eggs, free firewood, free microhomes, free medical care, a free ER cookie and Jell-O mold, and other free goods and services. I wanted to give my mail lady a present, but I learned that it substantially exceeded the maximal allowable federal limit. (Read more about that inscrutable restriction that I tie into a topic illustrating how we could increase a specific freedom, save taxes, and save lives.)
Americans can now face the wrath of the federal government for selling imperfect items at garage sales even though the sellers were not responsible for the imperfections! Our government loves to pick on the little guys (and gals) on Main Street, yet it won't go after the big corporations that made that crap. Why? Because the federal government is a bully. Bullies don't care about doing the right thing; they care about using the might makes right principle to give you hell. And now, on this 4th of July, as Americans celebrate freedom, they turn a blind eye to the government that is robbing us of freedom and, and I proved above, hurting us in ways that our enemies could only dream of.
Freedom once was worth fighting for, but smart people could now quickly have freedom they deserve without breaking any laws or shedding any blood. However, the spineless and brainless folks in the United States can't figure out how to do that, and how to get what they want without screwing someone else.
Chief Justice Roberts would never have dared to trample a Constitution backed by 300+ million strong, smart, and principled people who revere freedom. He knew he could tighten the noose and get away with it, and he did.
Earth to Chief Justice Roberts: The Supreme Court's job is to DEFEND the Constitution, not ERODE it!
“There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.”
— Aristotle
“If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave.”
— John Bryant
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
— Harriet Tubman, a truly great American who had a $52,000 bounty on her head, equivalent to $1.41 million in 2012
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and polymath
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”
— Voltaire
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
— Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden and Civil Disobedience, an essay “motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War.”
Want to understand one reason why Americans are so spineless? Read about system justification. People who understand system justification won't be surprised to learn that support for ObamaCare rose after the Supreme Court ruling.
In fairness to the government, the nooses around the necks of sheeple are not entirely—or even primarily—placed there by the government, but by the sheeple themselves: liberals, independents, and conservatives, too. All of that conservative/Tea Party bellyaching about what's wrong misses the fact that the primary problem isn't the government usurping our freedom and money associated with it; that is just a symptom and consequence of the real problem: the lack of resolve to do anything except whine when freedom is eroded. Other than a few crazies, no one does anything except bitch about how our leaders are screwing us and dooming our children to a dismal future, but our responses aren't limited to the polar extremes of doing nothing or listening to the lunatics. However, Americans are such great followers that they follow conservative and Tea Party leaders who excel in complaining about problems but not finding the perfect way to address them.
Oh, sure, we can vote in rigged elections dominated by the two-party/two-wings-of-the-same-bird system that has a death grip on us. Not coincidentally, virtually everyone who wins elections of consequence is firmly committed—despite the rhetoric that dupes voters—into maintaining the current system that never improves. Every year, no matter if Democrats or Republicans dominate, we have more laws and more regulations, and hence less freedom.
To illustrate how conservatives and Tea Party supporters are misguided, they flock to Fox News, which ridicules candidates such as Ron Paul who stand for real change. They reflexively insinuate that he is crazy for opposing the endless wars we can't afford that I discussed in an article, The collapse of the U.S. economy: inevitable unless we do this. This is one of the many reasons I went from Fox News fan to fed-up foe.
Fox News is chock-full of foxes and big mouths who do a superb job of enforcing a rigid ideology that plays into the hands of leaders who undoubtedly are laughing at us behind our backs, mocking our weakness. No matter how they screw us, we take it up the rear and do nothing more than grumble before dutifully acquiescing to every loss of liberty and every tax or expansion of national debt that increasingly makes freedom more of a fantasy than a reality. There is a perfectly legal and ethical solution to this problem, but Americans are so bereft of imagination and courage that they flock to Fox News and media like it that excel at whining about problems but not solving them.
With the solution being rather obvious, it is clear they are stupid (despite their silver tongues) or perhaps succumbing to the same system justification impulses that turn men into mice.
Or perhaps they are controlled opposition, like Glenn Beck, who is a master of fanning the flames of discontent about what's wrong but a dunce at finding solutions that could work now—as in this week, not maybe a lifetime or two from now.
Speaking of “controlled opposition”:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
— Noam Chomsky
In that regard, Beck is just like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and the long list of conservative characters who handsomely profit from the perpetuation of problems so they can gripe about them. Griping is a very lucrative business: one that gave Limbaugh enough bucks to woo a hot babe young enough to be his daughter, or at least pretend to love him, not his wallet, long enough to really cash in. If Limbaugh were a used car salesman—something he'd likely ace—what's the chance that Kathryn Rogers would have married him? Zero or none. Instead, she'd wrinkle her cute little nose and wince in disgust at the prospect of bedding a man who looks and sometimes acts like Archie Bunker.
“Follow the money” is good advice for police solving crimes or citizens trying to figure out what's wrong with our system and why billions of hours of complaining about it have given us many more problems that we had a few decades ago. Thus, while all of that complaining helped Limbaugh and Beck cash in, they haven't appreciably helped us—unless you're blockheaded enough to think having more problems now than before is something to cheer about.
Being eternal optimists with poor memories, Americans always put their faith in the next election despite compelling evidence that elections don't solve problems. If they did, we wouldn't have more problems than our parents faced. Year after year, election after election, things don't improve and often get worse, with many seeming improvements nothing more than illusions made possible by putting band-aids on problems, often financed by borrowing that expands our national debt and transfers problems onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. If individual citizens could do something that unconscionable, they could transfer their mortgage and utility bills to the next inhabitants of their homes.
We revere the Greatest Generation for their hard work and sacrifices, but future generations are bound to loathe us as the Brainless and Spineless Generation for not having enough brainpower and resolve to think of an obvious way to restore our constitutional freedoms this week without relying on tyrants like Chief Justice Roberts to save us because, let's face it, he is more concerned with his pathetic legacy than us or the Constitution. If he understood the latter, he'd understand why his twisted logic used to support his decision is so fingernails-on-a-chalkboard abominable. His smug little smile hides an ugly truth: that he is tickled pink that he has the power to make a mockery of the Constitution and the ultimate principle behind it: freedom.
Instead of solving our problems now, we let them drag on, year after year, election after election. People on the Right are now pinning their hopes for a Romney victory in 2012. Romney will solve our problems.
Dream on.
Implementing my solutions (here's one of them) would be better for conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between, but pugnacious Americans prefer fighting each other to cooperating and thinking long enough—about one minute is all it took me—to figure out how to solve our problems instead of perpetuating them. Our leaders would stand in the way of anyone trying to implement such solutions, but there is an easy and legal way to make them back down and realize that their days of putting nooses around our necks are over. However, Fox News and others of their ilk would fight this change tooth and nail, preferring the current inside-the-box solutions that don't work. If such solutions were effective, why aren't they whittling down our problem list instead of letting it mushroom out of control? Our biggest problem is big government, but when Republicans purportedly committed to smaller government controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, they didn't shrink government, they expanded it.
Fox News works overtime to block effective solutions, which they fear so much they won't permit an intelligent discussion of alternatives to the current inside-the-box ways to guarantee the suicide of a superpower. Instead, they trot out hunks and babes and big mouths with even larger egos to rehash freeze-dried ideas from bygone American politicians, as if repeating our errors will magically solve our problems.
Recalling Einstein's definition of insanity, it is insane to look to old ideas that didn't produce miracles then and won't produce miracles now. If you understand demographics and can read the other writing on the wall, you know that what we need is something akin to a miracle, not a rehash of Reagan or, heaven forbid, Bush—either one. We need fresh thinking, but Fox News and other enforcers declare war on anyone who dares not march in lockstep with their second-rate ideas.
“Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured, but not everyone must prove they are a citizen.”
And fathom the idiocy of our federal government, which “is considering a bailout of the sugar industry” and routinely subsidizes it even though “rising health care costs are the number one driver of America's long-term deficit.”
Pure insanity.
Justice John Roberts's allegiance isn't with the Constitution but with his conviction that it is A-OK for control to trump freedom even though the United States should exemplify liberty. It is easy to understand Roberts when you (a) understand who appointed him—George W. Bush—and (b) consider this quote:
“We've now learned the devastation of the American middle class because of the World Trade Organization and China—how they game the system, we've lost millions of jobs. There's no doubt about it, that globalism of the Bush variety [that every recent President also supported] has been devastating to American workers. … The establishment has failed the people.”
— Conservative Laura Ingraham on Fox News (2-9-2016)
Comment: When someone as staunchly conservative as Laura Ingraham appears on Fox News and reveals how the Bushes … let me put it this way: in World War II, the middle class faced Germany and Japan, both very intelligent, formidable enemies hell-bent on destroying us. Not only did the middle class survive, they prospered, coming out of that stronger than ever.
We faced a Cold War with the even-mightier USSR, left them in the dust, and rose to new heights of prosperity. But the middle class was devastated by the Bushes who were—and are—in bed with the über-rich globalists who fed like parasites off the middle class, draining their money and dashing their dreams so the fat cats in the top 1% can get even richer—and they are, now controlling half the world's wealth with no end in sight to their plunder. The über-rich learned that by controlling politicians, they control the world so they can take more of it, leaving 99% of us to fight for the leftovers. Being smart, they control both Republicans and Democrats, so no matter who wins, they win, and the middle class loses.
Notes:
- “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that workers don't have a federal right to be paid for time spent in post-shift security searches …”
Comment: The Supreme Court again screwing the little guy, just as they did with Obamacare, which is a gift to Big Insurance. - I agree with Senator Mike Lee's book: Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare: A Conservative Critique of The Supreme Court's Obamacare Ruling. I also agree with what Lee said: that Roberts betrayed his oath to uphold the Constitution. By doing that, he abrogated one of our most fundamental freedoms and substituted it with control, thus pleasing the tyrants who lust to control us. Nothing says “George W. Bush is STUPID” like “Bush picked Roberts.” With friends like Bush, who needs enemies?
- Will Obamacare Turn America Into a Nation of Part-Time Workers?
Comment: President Obama does some great things, such as sign the JOBS Act (I am Cheerleader #1 for that!), but the Law of Unintended Consequences may hurt many Americans in ways they never expected—and President Obama almost surely never intended. I truly doubt he wanted to give companies a huge incentive to limit worker hours and hence deny them health insurance coverage, full-time wages & benefits, etc., but that is exactly what is happening. In reaching for what seemed a freebie, people punched themselves in the gut. Oops! Obama 24/7/365 fans think their god can do no wrong, but whatever benefits accrue from ObamaCare will very likely be offset by even more problems, which is typical of government. Have they ever solved any problem? At reasonable cost? Without reducing freedom? - Ilana Mercer: Why government 'care' will never, ever work
- Celebrities who promoted ObamaCare now quiet in wake of website debacle
- Big Sugar Is Set for a Sweet Bailout
A commenter wrote, “Funny I haven't noticed the price of MY sugar dropping. Quite the contrary. Why is my country, whose job is to protect my Constitutional rights, dealing in the commodities market anyway? I can assure you, the REAL reason is not to "help" anyone but themselves.” Exactly.
Another commenter said, “Here in Iowa the agriculture insurance program is a joke. Farmers are planting every inch of poor soil knowing insurance will provide returns on underperforming land.” - Insurers warn of overhaul-induced sticker shock
Excerpt: “Some Americans could see their insurance bills double next year as the health care overhaul law expands coverage to millions of people.”
Comment: Just what America needs: another nail in its coffin. And we PAY our leaders for doing this to us? Affordable Care Act, my foot! Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, said “we have to pass the [healthcare] bill so that you can find out what is in it.” As I've become less conservative and more liberal, that comment still rankles me. - Study: Health law to raise claims cost 32 percent
Comment: That reminds me of what P.J. O'Rourke said: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.” - Will Obamacare Carve Up the Restaurant Industry?
Excerpt: “In the end, the real lasting impact of the Affordable Care Act may not be universal health care coverage, as originally promised, but rather a nation of part-time workers paying more for our meals when we go out to eat. If we can afford to.”
Comment: Their goose is cooked. Ours may not be. President Obama hurts Americans in some ways but helps them in others, such as by signing the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, for which he has been given little credit even though it has the potential to kickstart our economy. - Daniel Kessler: The Coming ObamaCare Shock
Excerpt: “Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, called it [ObamaCare] a "train wreck."”
Comment: Baucus was one of Obamacare's chief architects. After helping to screw up our nation, he is retiring to avoid the “train wreck” he helped create. - Getting ObamaCare coverage could be more painful than doing your taxes
- Obamacare faces new legal challenge: Its 'tax' still violates the Constitution: “The Supreme Court saved Obamacare by deeming the law's individual mandate a 'tax.' But in that case, the law violates the Constitution's Origination Clause, which says all tax bills must originate in the House, not the Senate. Letting the law stand sets a dangerous precedent.”
- US Affordable care act leaves many children without important benefits
- Medicare Hike Could Also Hit Some in Middle Class
Comment: But he promised only the rich will pay more! - Physician shortage likely to get worse
Excerpt: “Already in short supply, the number of practicing physicians is declining — and the new healthcare law will only make things worse.”
Comment: Oops, someone forgot about that! - Report: Govt. agents protected director's aide
Excerpt: “Two agents put on Operation Moonlight thought the reassignment was a potentially illegal use of government resources and were concerned enough about their own liability that they kept records of their involvement and their superiors' instructions.”
Comment: A potentially illegal use of government resources? Obviously yes, but leaders in Washington think that rules are only for us to follow; they think they can do whatever they want with our money. - Your privacy online: Health information at serious risk of abuse, researchers warn
Comment: And the ObamaCare website still isn't secure. - Studies of health information exchanges yet to show strong evidence of benefits, paper says
- Nixoncare vs. Obamacare: Comparing the rhetoric and reality of two health plans
- Insurance causes costs of services to rise
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”